


Drink With Me

by Linguini



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Arthur gets married, Carolyn has a good time, Dancing, Douglas lends a hand, Drunkenness, Fluff, Gen, Gen Fic, Martin makes a friend, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 12:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linguini/pseuds/Linguini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Arthur's wedding day, and the MJN crew celebrate appropriately.</p>
<p>For this prompt on the meme:  http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/6034.html?thread=9823122#cmt9823122</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drink With Me

Carolyn thought the wedding should have been in April.

Nothing would better represent the newest Shappey couple than bright sunshine, the acres upon acres of daffodils, the promise of new life in the lambs and foals of the fields. Instead, they’d chosen October. Autumn is Arthur’s favorite season, he’d explained, although he was hard-pressed to use the word “favorite.” When the rain is lashing down and you’re safe in the sitting room with a mug of tea, snuggled on the couch with someone special.

The newly-minted Missy Shappey agreed, though more a fan of October in particular. Once Arthur had pointed out that October 22 was the exact mid-point between their birthdays, it seemed like the perfect option. Unfortunately, Arthur had made this brilliant discovery in early September, which didn’t leave much time for the arrangements. 

Arthur, being Arthur, had been unable to choose a “best” man, and had, instead, divided specific tasks between Martin and Douglas. Martin was responsible for practical matters: holding the rings, getting the suits, transportation, and schlepping things to and from the venue. Douglas was responsible for organizing the stag night and the reception.

The day of the wedding broke bright and clear, if a bit chilly. The ceremony was cheerful and simple, and the reception afterwards was a lively affair. The MJN members sat at a table near the front with most of the rest of the Fitton airfield crew. Carolyn, as befits the mother of the groom, was matronly and smart--right up until the point where Douglas poured her a fourth glass of champagne. As the alcohol flowed more freely, so did her laugh, a surprisingly youthful giggle that made Martin and Douglas grin every time they heard it.

Eventually, Carolyn decided she wanted to dance. “C’mon, Martin,” she coaxed. “Just one song. It’s not even a hard one. I’ll save the foxtrot for Douglas later.”

Douglas laughed, first at the look of utter mortification on Martin’s face and then at the idea of foxtrotting with the increasingly bubbly Carolyn. “Go on,” he said. “Show us what you’re made of.”

Carolyn tugged at Martin’s hand until he gave up and let her take him to the floor, where she promptly took the lead. Martin flushed and looked at Douglas helplessly, but Douglas was already focused on flirting with the young lady who’d brought the champagne over. Carolyn wrapped her hand around his waist and took his other hand gently, guiding him around the room. The song shifted somewhat less than seamlessly into a fast-paced popular track. Martin lasted 30 seconds before he left the floor, gasping for air and agog at Carolyn’s enthusiasm. 

“Good Lord,” he said to Douglas. “What’s gotten into her?”

“Herc, I should think,” Douglas replied.

Martin choked a bit on the wine he was drinking. “What did you say?!”

Douglas looked at him serenely. “Herc likes to dance, and I imagine he’s roped her into going with him. Why? What did you _think_ I meant?”

Martin flushed. “N-nothing. Nothing at all.”

Douglas flashed him a wicked smile. “Naughty, Captain Crieff.”

Martin was saved from answering by an Arthur, who between the joy of marriage and the bliss found at the bottom of an entire bottle of wine drunk by oneself was even more enthusiastic than usual. “Skip,” he practically shouted. “There’s someone here you have to meet!” He grabbed Martin’s arm and hauled him from the table. Douglas pretended not to see Martin’s look pleading for rescue.

Arthur took Martin to one of the tables on Missy’s side of the room, where an old lady was hunched over her plate with a sour look on her face. He reached over and tapped her on the shoulder, shouting into her ear. “Auntie Margot! This is the pilot I was telling you about! His name is Martin!” Without another word of introduction, Arthur departed.

_Great_ Martin thought to himself. _Why is it always me that gets stuck with the little old ladies? Good old Martin, needs someone to look after him. She can’t even hear, for God’s sake. And I don’t know anything about cats!_ He was startled from his inward grumping by the sight of her mouth moving. Clearly she was speaking to him. _Oh Lord! What did she say?!_

Her mouth stopped, and she looked at him, clearly expecting an answer.

“I-I-I’m sorry,” Martin stuttered. “I didn’t catch that. Walked past the speakers, you see, and my ears were ringing.”

Margot gave him a smile eerily reminiscent of one of Carolyn’s schoolmarm expressions. “I only asked,” she said sweetly, “which you think is harder, the approach to Kathmandu or Hong Kong.”

Martin’s mouth gaped open before he could stop himself. “A-a-actually, I’ve always found Lugano most difficult. The descent angle is tricky, especially with a plane as old as ours.”

Her smile got friendlier. “So, you _are_ a pilot. What do you fly?”

“A Lockheed-McDonnell 312.”

“And what’s her name?”

Martin looked at her sharply. “Planes don’t have names.”

An assessing gaze from across the table. “Rubbish. Of course they do. All planes have names. Mine was Isabelle, after my mother. So, what’s. Your plane’s. Name?”

“Gertie. Her name is Gertie.”

Margot smiled with a bit of an edge that reminded him of Douglas. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Martin was still five seconds back in the conversation. “I’m sorry, you said _your_ plane?”

“Yes,” Margot replied. “My plane. As in, the plane belonging to me. The plane I flew for King and Country before buying her and flying her for myself.”

Martin mouth gaped open. “You flew for the RAF?!”

“Oh, close your mouth, son. You’ll catch a fly or something. Technically, it was the WAAF, but yes. Some of the best moments of my life were spent in that plane.”

Martin spent the rest of the night asking questions and swapping stories with Margot, getting involved in heated debates about flying procedures and sharing experiences. _God bless Arthur,_ he thought. _He's found me an actual friend_. 

Meanwhile, across the room, Douglas watched Carolyn with a weather eye as she grew more and more cheerful, chatting animatedly with strangers, playing with the children, even making a discrete (but, Douglas deduced, saucy) call to Herc. He grinned as he saw her dance with Arthur, letting him lead, spinning them dizzily around the room until he dropped her off, beaming with delight, back at Douglas’s table.

Douglas pushed a glass of water across to her. “Having a good time?” he asked wryly.

Carolyn grinned--not her normal, sharky grin, but a real honest-to-goodness pleased grin-and sipped at the water. “Everything’s lovely,” she said. “Lovely, lovely, lovely. And the lovely lovey-dovey lovers will live lovely lives of love and...” She trailed off.

“Liveliness?” Douglas supplied. 

Carolyn’s grin grew impossibly wider. “Exactly!” she enthused, slopping a bit of the water out of her glass. “You’re terribly clever, aren’t you?” And she reached over and pinched his cheek, in the way of elderly aunts everywhere.

Douglas was shocked speechless for only a moment before his brain kicked into action. Here was a rare chance to have the upper hand over Carolyn, finally, rather than the tit-for-tat friendly sniping of their normal relationship. But then he looked at her watching Arthur from across the room. If he took advantage of her inebriation and good humor to play a prank, she would never, ever trust him again. And in spite of the devil-may-care attitude he projected to the world around him, he enjoyed the friendship he found at MJN. 

Besides, he mused, there was always more fun to be had the day after, when the mother of the groom would presumably have the mother of all hangovers. His thoughts were interrupted by Carolyn, who had moved to sit next to him and put her hand on his bicep.

“D’you know,” she said, a bit wobbily “that Arthur once won an award for baking? He was six, and he made a chocolate brownies with cherries in.”

“No,” Douglas drawled. “I assume he was the only contestant?”

Carolyn slapped his arm playfully. “Don’t be mean. You know he can bake.”

“I know nothing of the sort.”

“Well, he can,” she said. “Quite well. Assuming he has all the ingredients. Otherwise, he’s forced to” here she took a dramatic breath and adopted her best evil mastermind voice “improvise.”

Douglas drew in a gasp, clutching at his imaginary pearls and placing the back of his hand on his forehead. “No! Not that!”

“Yes. _Improvise._ ”

Douglas couldn’t take it anymore; he started to laugh, which sparked off a riot of giggles from Carolyn and then her worst American South drawl. “Why, Mister Richardson. I do declare you turned positively ghost white. I feared I would have to fetch the salts.”

It was difficult to do, but Douglas pitched his voice as high as he could, adding dramatic squeaks and breathlessness. “Oh my oh my, I myself feared that would be the case. For I found myself quite overcome with distress at the thought of improvisation. Oh, do hold me, my dear, lest I lose my manly virtue and become wise in the ways of buns and pastries.”

“I’ll show you some buns,” Carolyn chortled and then nearly fell off her chair laughing.

The two of them spent the rest of the evening trading innuendo back and forth, Carolyn’s suggestions growing increasingly more overt the more she drank. For his part, Douglas enjoyed seeing her so relaxed and took her on half a dozen turns around the dance floor, making up the steps as he went along. The dancing ended when, while attempting to dip Douglas after an energetic salsa, Carolyn tripped on her dress and the two of them landed pressed chest-to-chest on the dance floor.

“It’s a very good thing Herc isn’t here,” Douglas mumbled as he maneuvered his way out from under Carolyn as quickly and painlessly as possible. 

Carolyn looked suddenly sad. “It’s not a good thing,” she pouted. “Dumb pilots, always making things difficult.”

Douglas hauled her up by her arms, setting her lightly back on her feet. “Now, now. None of that, my dear. It’s a celebration, and you know he’d be here if he could. Besides, he’s flying back tonight. You’ll see him soon enough.”

He handed her a slim flute of water. “Here,” he said. “Drink this and forget your troubles.”

Carolyn complied and then tossed the glass at Douglas, who barely managed to catch it before it hit the floor. “Worst champagne ever,” she announced. “Tasted like water.”

“My apologies. Let me see if I can’t find something more to your taste.” He sauntered over to the bar. “White wine spritzer, heavy on the spritzer, please.” The bartender gave him a knowing smile. “Nearing the end of the line, are we?”

“She could drink anyone here under the table,” Douglas replied. “I’d just rather we didn’t get to the arm-wrestling stage tonight. Hell on the elbows, you know.”

The bartender chuckled and passed over the glass. “And for you, sir?”

“Another of what I was drinking, please.” He took both glasses to the table, highly amused to find Carolyn fully engaged in creating a snowman out of marshmallows from the chocolate fountain.

“Perhaps pretzel sticks for arms?” he suggested, handing over her glass. 

“Brilliant,” she said, with exactly the same inflection as Arthur would have used.

Douglas laughed. “I always wondered where he got that from.”

“100 percent mine,” Carolyn said. “I taught it to him because his first words were bloody wanker. No points for guessing where he learned that.”

“Emily’s first word was martini,” Douglas replied. “I honestly have no idea where she learned it, since I was strictly a whiskey man and Miriam never drank more than a glass of wine. Perhaps it was all the James Bond movies we watched when she was young.”

Carolyn paid no attention, fixated on creating a hat for her snowman out of a strawberry. Predictably, the whole structure collapsed the instant she tried to attach it. Not fazed in the least, she grabbed one of the pretzel sticks and viciously bit off a piece. 

The rest of the night was spent entertaining Carolyn, learning about Arthur’s early years, the sweet shop in Lancashire, and her antics as a schoolgirl. They discovered a mutual loathing for bullies and argued about the relative merits of Russian authors and generally sat and had the longest conversations of their lives together.

The last song was a slower piece, specially picked by Arthur and Missy. For a second, Douglas was afraid Carolyn would ask him to dance, until he noticed that she’d given him over in favor of pillowing her head on her arms and closing her eyes. Douglas gave her a fond pat on the back and placed a large wine glass of water near her elbow as he went off in search of his captain.

He found Martin, sitting with a distinguished-looking lady, drawing what looked like the airfield diagram for Charles De Gaulle International on a cloth napkin.

“Martin,” he called, laying a paternal hand on his shoulder. “Time to go now, before you ruin any more serviettes.”

“Oh, Douglas.” Martin’s face was flushed with excitement, eyes glittering in the dim light of the room. “Meet Margot. She’s a pilot!”

Margot-the-pilot rose gracefully and extended her hand to Douglas.

“Charmed,” Douglas said, laying a kiss on the back. The lady gave him a flinty smile.

“It was lovely meeting you two, but I really must go. My flight to Belgium is scheduled for early in the morning, and I don’t want to be late.”

Martin’s face clouded in thought as he stood up to see her leave. “There’s no flight to BRU that leaves earlier than 1030 on a Sunday.”

“No _commercial_ flight,” Margot returned. “And I’m not flying to BRU. I’m landing at Geraardsbergen.”

It took awhile for Martin to process that, but once he had his mouth gaped open. “You flew here?!” he squeaked.

“Why, of course, my dear,” Margot said. “It’s the only way to travel, don’t you think? But I really must be going. Thanks for a lovely evening, Captain.” She kissed him on the cheek and was off, leaving behind a scent trail of jet fuel and jasmine. Martin’s mouth remained open until Douglas gently reached over and tapped under his chin. He closed his mouth with a snap.

“Did...did you hear that? She... _flew_ here.”

“Alright, Martin,” Douglas said. “I know you’re twitterpated, but it’s time for all good captains to be going to bed.”

“But...she...and then....and DOH and CCW and...”

Douglas sighed, pulling Martin’s elbow to sit back in his chair as he recapped the whole night in one long breath, one hand over where Margot had kissed his cheek.

“And then she flew in a race from---”

"Martin," Douglas interrupted, trying his hardest to hide a smile. "How many drinks have you had?"

Martin scrunched his eyebrows together. "Two?" he asked, tipping to one side.

Douglas halted his sideways progress. "Just the two?"

Martin nodded, looking serious. Or seriously drunk. "Yesh. I mean, yes. Two. Not seven. Or seventeen. Just the two. And no more."

There were at least twelve empty wine glasses arranged in military precision next to his elbow. "And those glasses arrayed as if parading before the Queen? None of those are yours? They’re not under the command of Captain Martin Crieff late of Her Highness Ms. Carolyn Knapp-Shappey’s charter firm?"

Martin turned, as if surprised to see them there. "How did you....I mean, no. Not mine. Not at all, not all mine, no, no."

Douglas grinned. “Excellent denial, Martin. I would have believed you in another universe. One in which I had neither eyes nor ears.”

Martin huffed as Douglas pulled him up and started walking back to their table. “But then you wouldn’t fly! And who would help me with things like unsticking doors in Chile or getting my wallet back from that goat in Punjab or, or, or...reaching the top of that shelf in the hangar at home?”

“You’d find someone else. Perhaps Dirk? I hear he’s always looking for a reason to spend time with you.”

“That’s only because he’s still upset I won’t let him mow in the safety zones while we’re taking off anymore. He wants to exact revenge, like use me as a scarecrow or something!”

“May I just say,” Douglas drawled as they neared their table, “that I think you would make the most effective scarecrow Fitton airfield has ever seen?”

Martin flushed with pride. “Thank you Do--Hey! Wait! I don’t look like a scarecrow!”

“Martin, my boy,” Carolyn said. “You absolutely do. If it’s not your ribs showing through, just the threat of being subjected to hours of landing procedures would keep any crow from coming within 100 miles of the airfield.”

Douglas handed Martin a large glass of water. “Margot liked my stories,” Martin grumbled into his glass, taking a deep gulp.

“That she did,” Douglas agreed. “You’ve found a real catch there, Martin. Maybe Arthur will give you her contact details and you can arrange to meet up.”

Martin perked up instantly. “Do you really think so?”

“Of course. If you remember to ask him in the morning, that is.”

Martin nodded seriously.

“Now, both of you. Drink up that water and take these painkillers. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

They complied and Douglas soon had them making their way to the rooms they’d reserved for the night. He dropped off Martin first with a handwritten checklist complete with bold face to be completed before bed and assurances that Douglas would wake him up in the morning for breakfast.

The final stop was in Carolyn’s room, where deposited her with strict instructions, watching as she drank a full glass of water and took two more painkillers. She followed him as he made to leave the room, and tugged on his sleeve as he opened the door.

When he’d turned to face her, she put her hand on one cheek. 

“You’re a good friend, Douglas” she said and kissed his cheek softly.

He smiled at her and turned her gently around. “As are you, my dear. Now, bed.” He watched as he complied and then stepped out, one more good deed for the night left on his to-do list.

Martin woke the next morning with a splitting headache and a queasiness in his stomach that had him curled up in a ball of misery in the bathroom, lying on the cool tile to relieve the throbbing behind his eyes. It took him a full three hours to notice the note pinned to his soft t-shirt in Douglas’s neat script.

“ _Margot Engelen  
Vierbunderweg 7  
9500 Geraardsbergen  
Belgium_

_Blue skies, Captain._  
-DR”

Martin grinned and folded the paper carefully, slipping it into his wallet. Blue skies indeed.


End file.
